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Thursday, September 6, 2018

America, in a mystery snapshot

Here's a slice of post-war America that has just about everything but the apple pie.

The mystery black-and-white snapshot, printed on Kodak Velox Paper with a deckle edge, features a boy doing his best Mickey Mantle impression in a grassy yard in suburbia. After the picture, family members probably loaded themselves into that car in the driveway. I'm not a car person and I'm terrible at identifying them, but I did a little research for you, dear readers, and my best guess is that it's a 1950s Buick Century. Please feel free to correct me in the comments section.

But for me, the true lodestar in this photograph is the house. I'm a sucker for mid-century homes, and this one looks like a cheery place to reside, with its screened porch and big windows looking out into the yard. It's a little before the era of the sunkenarium, perhaps, but I bet it has some cozy features inside, plus plenty of natural light. These California ranch-style homes were also called ramblers, and Wikipedia has this to say about them:

"The house style fused modernist ideas and styles with notions of the American Western period of wide open spaces to create a very informal and casual living style. While the original style of the ranch was very informal and basic in design, starting around the early 1960s, many ranch-style houses constructed in the United States (particularly in the Sun Belt region) were increasingly built with more dramatic features like varying roof lines, cathedral ceilings, sunken living rooms, and extensive landscaping and grounds."

Hmmm. So maybe there was a sunkenarium inside! This kid would sit in there and sort his baseball cards and comics while listening to Yankees games on the radio. Or perhaps he followed one of the popular radio serials of days, such as "Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons" or "Mr. President."

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About the Author

I'm Chris Otto, a Pennsylvania resident and journalist whose hobbies and interests include old books, ephemera, history, folklore, alpacas, photography and much more. Never stop reading, learning and asking questions! I consider this blog to be a spiritual descendant of Microsoft Encarta and a companion to Wikipedia. Every piece of paper tells a story.
Reach me at chrisottopa (at) gmail.com.

As (kind of) featured in The New York Times...

Papergreat was mentioned in Stephanie Clifford's August 7, 2011, article in The New York Times titled "Shopper Receipts Join Paperless Age." Find out why, years ago, I held onto a receipt for a hot dog!

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